Rameau's Niece

Margaret mused on her own self-absorption. If people expect anything of me, I resent them and feel incompetent and ill at ease. And yet I expect so much, and if I don't get it, I feel only contempt. I'm sort of an asshole, she thought.

"Politically, the myth of the American male had its strongest expression in Ronald Reagan."

"Do you really think so?" she blurted out, determined suddenly to join in, her voice sounding loud to her. "Eisenhower is my idea of an American male."

"And that is why she married me, isn't it, darling?" said her husband in his most affected imperial British (she rules the waves!) accent. I say, said the accent, what a funny little colony it is.

No, Margaret thought. I married you because I'm greedy and you're generous, because when I'm with you I don't notice that I've forgotten everything because you have forgotten nothing.

For years she had toiled in the library, willful and superior, tolerating this boyfriend, then that boyfriend, for a while, then abruptly dumping the current one to take up unenthusiastically with another, proud of her detachment—one false move and you're out, buster—all the while waiting. Waiting for Edward, of course, with whom the fog of her life took on a discernible shape, an elegant, exquisite shape, like Jove when he had abandoned his cloudy disguise after seducing Io.

Of course, poor Io turned into a heifer, didn't she? Maybe I had really better tell the American male how much I loved his book, she thought, looking at the author, because really I'm sure I would have; or ask him what he's working on, although that probably was reported by Liz Smith and sold to the movies in a record-breaking deal months ago, or worse, this morning, and reported on page one of the Times.

He wasn't as well dressed as he was reputed to be, though, was he? Didn't they write magazine pieces about his wardrobe? Then, suddenly, Margaret blushed, thanking God for the inability to speak at dinner parties, which thereby covered up her inability to think at dinner parties, and admitted to herself that she had spent all this time under the impression that the sportswriter beside her, whom she had met so many times, was a novelist whom she had never set eyes on.

She could hear her husband. He was talking about Walt Whitman. I wish I could talk about Walt Whitman. I wish I was Walt Whitman, a drunken homosexual American genius. What cachet. Then I could say whatever I wanted. But I don't want to say anything.

"Excuse me," said the perfumed girl (Dominique, was it?), squeezing back into her place.

Remembering Till's injunction to be nice to Dominique, Margaret tried to smile, then, slowly, careful to enunciate clearly, she said, "Do-you-read-American-poet? Whitman?" She gave the name a slight French intonation: Whit-mahn. "Walt Whit-mahn?"

"No," said Dominique.

"So, Bonnie," said the sportswriter-who-was-not-a-novelist to Dominique, "What're you working on?"

"I'm in turnaround," said Dominique-who-was-really-Bonnie and had never been Dominique at all, or even French. She went on about her latest project, a screenplay called The Private Life of Squeaky Fromme.

Well, now it is time for me to go home, Margaret thought. Go home and read a book. A book by Walt Whit-mahn.

"Zut alors," she muttered to herself. Then abruptly, to the sportswriter, "Do you have a lot of friends?"

She had interrupted him. He was still talking to Bonnie. "Do I what?" he said.

"Do you have a lot of friends?"

"I suppose I do."

"Oh."

"Do you?"

"That's a rather personal question," she said severely.





EDWARD HAD GONE OUT to hear a friend of his at a reading, but Margaret disliked readings, embarrassed if the work was bad, too distracted by the author's physical idiosyncrasies and the audience's hairstyles to enjoy it if it was good. She stayed home and tucked herself into bed with her manuscript.

The girl was a guest of the Marquise de-, as was I, and our paths crossed many times during that month. At dinner, I often found myself glancing at her as I attempted to resolve some problem of philosophy, turning it over and over in my mind. And it soon became apparent to me, from her own glances, as well as a sudden and remarkably becoming flush that appeared on her cheeks during these exchanges of looks, that she too pondered these philosophical questions. At least so I hoped, and as the days passed I grew more and more curious to ascertain whether my perception was correct.

At these times, too, the question with which I was grappling began to take on a new urgency.

Is corporeal sensibility the sole mover of man?

Eagerness to establish the truth burned in my breast, fueled by the looks I exchanged with Rameau's niece.

One morning, I came across her walking in the gardens. She carried a book which, when she saw me, she held out to me as she approached with her habitual grace and delicacy. I took it from her, from her fingers agile and exquisite, and opened the volume, whereupon she turned the pages with such a lightness of touch that I marveled and felt almost weak with admiration.

She pointed to a line.

Understanding that I was to read it aloud, my voice trembling with involuntary emotion, I began.



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